Hey Howdy Hey!

Yet again another week has flown by. Time is going faster and faster and before I know it I'll be on a plane home. . . but there's no time to think about that.  I have been so blessed these past couple of weeks.  There have been very little concerns and issues to resolve throughout the zone and other than all the meetings that we've gone too we've just been straight workin hard!  I feel like a normal missionary!  It's awesome!  Elder Peterson is such a great companion and I work super well with him.  We work super hard and have been able to find a couple of new investigators this past week.  

The first guy we found is named Tommy.  I don't know I f I told you about him last week, but the first day Elder Peterson came in we knocked into Tommy.  He's a Buddhist college student, but he's super interested in learning about other religions and what not.  He really liked it when we taught him the Restoration.  He's uncomfortable with us praying though, but that'll come eventually.  Not sure of his commitment level to really know if this is true, but we're working with him.  We also taught a girl named Meghan that we found knocking.  We had a really good first lesson with her and set a return appointment to come back, but she told us the morning we were supposed to come back that she talked with her Dad about what we taught her and he wasn't having any of it and said that we can't come by again.  Sad but she'll learn more about the gospel when the time is right.  We also taught a lady named Maria who is super cool.  We are hoping to teach the rest of her family this week.  We found her knocking too.  We've done a lot of knocking this week.  It is great!  I love talking to people.  Like I've said before, most of the people we talk to don't even let us say much before they slam the door, but every so often we are able to teach and testify to bring the spirit to them.  We had a really good experience with this one guy named Brian that we knocked into.  He opened the door and had a super stern, almost angry face.  He was not happy that we were there.  My companion then just went into teaching him about how God loves him and that the gospel of Jesus Christ blesses families.  The look he had on his face started to leave.  I then asked him how Jesus Christ had blessed his family and he thought for a moment and then started naming off a couple of things.  It was awesome.  We then went into teaching him about the Restoration and he told us that his sister is a mormon and that he's not buyin it, because we add to the bible and change things.  I then testified to him of how the Book of Mormon and Bible work together and we had a great conversation that eventually led to the root of his concern which was faith.  he told us that having faith in anything was super hard for him.  We then shared a couple scriptures and testified and he told us he wasn't interested, but thanked us for the conversation that we had.  he then told us how moment earlier that he had been arguing with his wife about some stupid stuff and he just went downstairs to cool off and we just happened to ring the doorbell.  Although he wasn't interested, he knew at that moment that God was aware of him and that if he focused more on what really matters, things will end up alright.  I beleive our interaction with him was just a part of a chain of events that will ultimatly lead him up to finding and accepting the Gospel later in his life.  I have had so many experiences like this.  It's so cool to be a part of and know that you are a small part of changing someone's eternity, and i get to do it everyday.  I love it and I'm grateful that God trusts me enough to do it. 

I love you all!

Elder Nelson  

Elder Joshua Nelson is Coming Home!!!

Elder Nelson will be arriving home on Wednesday, August 26, at 10:00am.  He will be speaking in church on Sunday, August 30, at 12:30pm.  Church address:  464 West Germania Avenue, Murray, UT.  Please call Andrea Nelson:  801-635-9235 if you have any questions.

Good Ole' Knockin'

Wow this has been a good week!  My new companion is Elder Peterson from Manti Utah.  He's great and works hard and is super funny.  He was in my district when I was back in Van Nuys.  He's been out a year and I'm glad I'm with him for my last transfer.  

Our zone right now is the smallest zone I've had on my mission.  There's only 14 missionaries.  That's smaller than the first district I was in.  It's super nice though and the new missionaries that came into our zone are fantastic.  They're happy, working hard, and seeing miracles.  

It was a good week as far as just being able to go out and work hard.  We talked with a lot more people this week than I have in previous weeks.  We didn't find as much unfortunately, and our investigators are still falling off the map.  We weren't able to meet with Denise this week.  She canceled.  We had a good lesson with Cheryl and we were able to share the restoration DVD with her.  Her daughters sat in on the lesson too!  It was so good and after the DVD she told us that she believes it's true, although her concern is still the same.  She cannot accept the doctrine of there being just one true church.  She still wants to go to her church, but she said that she would come to our meeting someday.  She told us she has a lot to pray about and think about.  At this point it's all up to her.  She knows its true, she's just got to be willing to act on what she knows. We're inviting and following up, but she's still not actively reading or praying about it.  Hopefully she'll come around.  I've taught a lot of people like this and it is so hard when you know that they know and they still aren't willing to act.  We're praying for her though.  We did pick up one new investigator this week.  Her name is Cheryl too.  We taught her the restoration on the doorstep.  She goes to Real Life church and loves the bible, but really liked the Restoration and wants to know more.  Hopefully things go well with her.  

As for the rest of the week, like I said, we were knocking doors!  It finally rained on Saturday and Sunday so we got to knock in the rain which was super fun. I love the rain.  California weather gets old sometimes.  It's always sunny!  It was good to change it up a bit.  We also met with the Stake President and President Henrie and discussed the work going on in the Santa Clarita Stake.  It was funny. President Lindberg turned the time over to President Henrie and he turned the time over to us.  It was interesting because President Hall would usually report on the key indicators and what not and ask us questions throughout, but President Henrie just turned the time over to us and we reported everything.  It was unexpected, but it was a good meeting nonetheless.  

Hopefully this week we'll find some prepared people!  Thanks for your prayers! Love ya!

Elder Nelson 

Last Transfer!?!

Holy cow I only have one transfer left.  Hopefully I'll stay with my companion for the entirety of this one.  I get my new companion tomorrow at transfer meeting.  I think I know who it is and I'm really excited, but I'll let you know for sure next week. 

It's been quite the week this week.  Covering two wards is stressful!  I was in my own area for only two days this week and we weren't there for the full day because we had appointments in the Solemint ward.  The one appointment in our area that didn't fall through was with Denise.  She is still doing the same. She's not praying.  She didn't come to church this week.  She is almost done with 1Nephi though which is sweet.  I'm not really sure what to do at this point with her.  She's an interesting one and questions absolutely everything before even thinking about it.  Like I said last week, hopefully she comes around, but the feeling that I have right now is that we'll have to drop her soon.  Other than her, we didn't meet with anyone else this week in my area.  In the Solemint ward we weren't able to meet with anyone either unfortunately. 

On Wednesday I had MLC.  The Valencia Zone leaders picked me up and took me there.  It was a cool meeting.  We're trying out a lot of new things in the mission.  We're switching district meeting times, Zone Training meeting times, and transfer meeting times.  We're also going to knock from 4-6 every day NO EXCEPTIONS.  Eeryone was super excited for that.  We call it "knockout."  President told us that he has been inspired to try this out and he feels that it will improve the work tremendously.  We're also focusing on teaching with the pamphlets and by the spirit.  We also talked a lot about obedience with the new mission training plan the President put out.  President asked us if we were ready for the changes and miracles that would take place if we were obedient.  The whole MLC was like, ya we are!  He then told us that from what he had seen so far that the mission wasn't.  I completely agreed.  Our mission has been up and down with obedience, but I really hope that it will improve.  From this meeting me and the STL's formed a plan for ZTM.  ZTM went alright.  Just as we were starting the meeting, a homeless man walked in the building and asked us where a bishop was.  We gave him the phone number of the bishop to call him and he hung around for a while and because of that we weren't able to start on time.  We tried to teach him with the pamphlets in front of everybody for training purposes.  We did something similar in a zone conference last year and it was sweet.  We invited him to  stay, and as we started the meeting, he just walked out.  All in all though the zone seemed to take the changes in the mission well and they really liked the new mission training plan.  All it is is our purpose from PMG, which makes sense.  I trained in ZTM on my own for the first time which was interesting, but it all worked out.  Other than that, I'm excited for next week!  Love you all!

Elder Nelson

Emergency Transfer

Well we got a call from the assistants during our dinner appointment yesterday and they asked us if we could excuse ourselves and step outside for a moment.  We did so and they told us that Elder Jones was being emergency transferred to Woodland Hills with Elder Gibson.  We were both shocked at this.  Elder Jones was hoping to stay another transfer in the area.  That would have been awesome, but something happened with some elders somewhere and a couple of people got Emergency transferred yesterday.  The assistants told us to pack and be at the mission office at 9:30.  Elder Jones was released as a zone leader and is now district leader in Woodland Hills.  As for me I'm now in a trio for this next week with the Solemint Elders.  Elder Bagely and Barnett are my companions and we're covering both the Saugus 2nd ward and Solemint ward.  It should be a fun week.  We've got a lot of meetings and things to do.  I'm sad that my companion got transferred so suddenly, but it's all good!

As for the week it was pretty good!  We had our "Meet the Mission President"  zone conferance on Thursday.  President Henrie is awesome!  Sister Henrie is awesome!  I'm so excited to work with them for this next transfer.  They just seem so pumped to be here and the training that they gave us on Wednesday was very good.  The power went out in the middle of the zone conferance, but we still went on with the training in the dark for 2 hours.  It was interesting.  We then moved to another chapel in the valley to finish.  For the training we discussed our purpose as missionaries and the story of Esther and a whole bunch of other things, but the main thing that I left the conferance with is a testimony that the Lord has called President Henrie at this specific time to work with the specific missionaries in this mission.  He's great.  

We also helped a member move out this week and I almost got crushed by a box avalanche.  We were stacking boxes in basically a semi trailer. . . on a slight incline.  We stacked a couple of rows of boxes up to the ceiling and they just started moving towards me.  Before I knew it boxes were falling all over the place and I almost died!  Ok no I didn't almost die, but it was pretty crazy nonetheless.  Needless to say we fixed the incline on the trailer and finished moving without any error.  We had a good lesson on Thursday with Denise at the Wilsons home. We helped her resolve her concern with prayer by committing her to write her prayers in a prayer journal.  She does still have a lot of concerns though with basically eveything,  hopefully once she starts praying about it all she'll have her concerns resolved, but if she doesn't start progressing, we probably will have to drop her in the next couple of weeks, which would be sad.

For the fourth of July, we knocked doors. It was pretty fun!  As fun as we made it.  We actually had some pretty good conversations with people and found a couple of potential investigators.  As you would guess, everyone was busy and had no time.  We got off an exchange that morning with the Solemint Elders which was awesome.  The day prior I was in the Solemint ward with Elder Bagley.  I was thinking to myself the whole time during the exchange that I would lve to serve in this area.  It's a huge area and has huge houses.  It's in the middle of the mountains and it just feels good.  I spoke to soon, because now I'm serving in Solemint!  Elder Bagely is awesome and we had a lot of good conversations with people.  He's from a small farm town in southern utah called Kusherem.  There's like 300 people that live there.  I'm excited to be able to serve with him and Elder Barnett. Anyways, back to my main point.  We had breakfast that morning with a the ward mission leader there which was a great addition to our 4th of July.  We had an awesome dinner with a member family and went to a ward get together at the Lindsays.  that night.  We didn't set off any fireworks, but we did have some poppers and stuff that we played with after planning that night.  

  Well right now we don't have to many investigators and it's pretty hard to find in this area.  this week we did a lot of finding and talking to people.  We found some pretty solid potential investigators and hopefully we'll be able to teach them this week.  Everyone is busy all the time and a lot of people just simply don't want to talk to us.  Or if they do, they want to tear us down. That's basically been the majority of my mission.  But all of the rejection and lack of investigators and teaching is nothing compared to the miracles that I've been able to be a part of.  Like I've said before, I haven't been able to directly see the results of my efforts turn into baptisms, but I've had the assurance almost everyday of my mission that the conversations and testimonies that i've shared with people have had an effect in some way on someone's eternity.  Just being able to have that assurance makes it all worth it.  And who am I kidding, I've been blessed beyond all belief on my mission with the people that I have been able to find and teach.  I've grown so much and I know they've grown too.  I've followed the spirit and Preach My Gospel to the best of my ability and I will continue to do so throughout the rest of my mission and the rest of my life.  The mission has been life changing and will continue to be life changing.  I love it and will continue to love doing the Lords work.  I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Nelson 

Fire in Saugus

Yup there was a fire in Saugus this past week up Bouquet canyon.  Nothing happened though.  I think maybe one house burned down up in the canyon, but no one was in it.  There were also two other fires throughout the week.  One was in Newhall which is where President lives.  President and his family had to get evacuated from their house because the fire came so close.  The firemen used there house to set up watch or something.  We had a stake correlation meeting on Wednesday with him and he was showing us all these pictures of the firetrucks in his driveway and the fire and what not.  They got the fire under control so nothing bad happened, but the smoke was all over Santa Clarita.  We were knocking and the ash from the fire just started raining down on us.  It made knocking pretty interesting.  Fire and brimstone are coming!  I don't know much about the other fire, but its all good!  

We did some service way up in the boonies of our area.  it was almost out of the mission.  We got a referal from a member to go up to this lady and help her out.  She's french and has one daughter and lives in a cabin in the mountains.  It's so cool!  We got lost trying to get to her house and we were running through the woods knocking on doors to find her.  Eventually we found her.  It was fun.  We raked up dead grass on her property since it was a fire hazard and the fire department wanted her to clean it up.  We tried to talk to her about the gospel and she told us that she didn't want to hear any of it.  She doesn't beleive in God anymore since her husband passed away 3 years ago.  She told us that her daughter does though and that she would like coming to church.  We came back later in the week and did more service and talked with them both about coming to church and they committed to come either this week or the next.  We talked with them a little about the plan of salvation also and told us that we could come talke to them more about it this week.  They're sweet.

We also taught Denise which was interesting.  We taught her the last part of the plan of salvation in our ward mission leader's home.  It went well for the most part, but she's gotta be looking at anti stuff or something, because she is making super weird paralells with the bible and book of mormon.  Kind of like Joseph Smith wrote it from the bible.  The thing about it all is that she hasn't prayed with an open heart and really tried to seek for the answer.  She's keeping commitments, but her testimony isn't really growing.  She is learning a lot, but she isn't seeing things spiritually.  We've done our best with teaching and guiding her in the right direction and what not.  We're continuing to teach her and guide her, but she needs to really pray and want to know.  Right now, it doesn't really seem like it though, but hopefully she'll come around.

We weren't able to meet with Sandy this week, but she did come to church with her two kids!  They only stayed for Sacrament meeting, but are planning on coming back next week as well!  She is so cool and the ward did amazing at fellowshipping them when they came in.  The 9 year old, Bryce is autistic and has a hard time sitting in one spot for a long time, so sacrament was hard for him, but they told us they liked it.  

Other than that this week we've been knocking a lot and trying to work with members effectively and what not just to find and teach.  A lot of our investigators are dropping of the radar.  The Hindu man that I was excited about told us that he couldn't meet for two weeks.  Our other investigator Sheryl has canceled a lot on us lately, and the one investigator that we are activly teaching has a lot of concerns.  Things are good though and I'm learning a lot from these people.  I'm doing well and things are going super well in the zone for the most part.  I love you all and thank you for everything!

Elder Nelson

Exchanges

Well I got the package you sent mom!  Thanks!  It was great!  I don't have much to say this week, at least I don't think so.  Whenever I start writing I feel like I don't have much to tell and then I just keep writing and remembering things, so we'll see what happens.

This past week we went on exchanges with all the Elders in the zone starting on Tuesday.  Tuesday was just a day exchange, meaning we didn't spend the night.  The reason being that we had our mission temple trip on Wednesday and we had to leave early in the morning to get to the temple.  The exchange on Tuesday went really well.  Elder Jacobson came with me to my area.  He's a solid missionary and a great guy.  We had some super good conversations with each other throughout the day about the spirit and joy and motivation in missionary work.  We were able to feel the spirit as we talked with each other and build each other up.  We knocked most of the day and no one wanted to talk to us, except for the last door.  It's interesting how much that happens.  You'll go all throughout the day and no one will answer or no one will talk, until the last person.  It was a faith building experience, as everyday on the mission should be.

The temple trip was awesome!  It's weird to think that will be my last one with the whole english side of the mission.  I get to go at least two more times before I go home, since my birthday is in August and I get to go with the departing missionaries in August.  

Thursday we did exchanges with the Solamint ward elders.  Elder Barnett came to my area with me.  He actually came out on the mission with me and we have never really served around each other before, so it was good to get to know him.  He's super fun and loves the work and loves to work hard.  He's a district leader right now and this is the first time he's been in leadership his whole mission and he is stoked for it.  His district meeting this past week was awesome!  It was amiracle actually and was a catalyst to an answer to one of the sisters in his districts prayers.  It was at this district meeting that I was able to find out why I knew I was supposed to be in that bash with the Masters College man last week.  A certain sister in the district has been struggling with having people bash her testimony and beliefs and it's been really hard on her.  Reasonably so too, because people tell us we're wrong everyday and tell us that we don't know anything and that we're deceived , etc.  Anyways,  the meeting was on bearing testimony and doing so in teaching situations and contacts.  We all shared experiences about how we'd seen the power of testimony and I shared the experience we had in the bash.  After the meeting, the sister came up to Elder Jones and I and thanked us for sharing our experience, because that was an answer to her prayer!  She had been praying to be able to relate to someone and know what to do with all the rejection ashe had been facing and she told us that we answered her prayer!  It was so cool and it was all because and inspired district leader chose to train on what his district needed.  It was so cool!  All in all, I love Elder Barnett and he is a great district leader.  

We went on exchanges Friday with Elder Anderson.  He came to my area.  I tried to focus the exhcnage on the same things I talked about with Elder Jacobson and it went really well.  Elder Anderson is great!  

We also taught Denis this week.  We went over the Family Proclamation with her and she agreed with it for the most part, but she had some objections.  Her main concern right now is getting her to pray.  She hasn't prayed about any of what we've taught and it is very evident.  She got emotional when we talked to her about prayer, because she says that she just can't and she doesn't know why.  She did come to church this week though!  She wanted to come to Priesthood with us to see what it was like.  We took her to High Priests to help her see that Relief Society is so much better, but it didn't work.  She liked High Priest's better than relief society!  She said she'd give relief society another shot though next week.  

Other than that, everything is great!

Love you all!

Elder Nelson